


Basorexia

by waitingtobedistributed



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/M, First Kiss, Kissing, Lots of kissing, Sherlolly - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-02
Updated: 2017-11-02
Packaged: 2019-01-28 12:00:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12606124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waitingtobedistributed/pseuds/waitingtobedistributed
Summary: basorexia | ba-sO-'rek-sE-a(n.) the overwhelming desire to kiss.





	Basorexia

**Author's Note:**

> I own nothing and I don't have a beta. Please forgive mistakes.

It doesn’t begin with the first kiss ( _Forgive me_ ), nor the second ( _I hope you’ll be very happy, Molly Hooper_ ).

No.

It begins with the third.

They’ve spent the day together on a case, (A six. Dull. Tedious. Only made bearable by her presence), it’s late, so he walks her to her door with no intention of going inside. But as Sherlock stands in the shadowed street outside of Molly’s flat, he finds himself leaning forward. Her face turns upward and in the light cast from the street lamps, amber like glowing embers, he sees her smile, eyes half hooded, tired from the case they’ve been working for days. She tilts her head, looking at him curiously.

Against the corner of her mouth, he softly presses his lips to hers. Applying just the gentlest of pressure, Sherlock feels the uptick of her mouth into a smile imprint itself on his lips. Despite the frosty air, she’s warm and welcoming, her breath ghosts hotly over his face when she lets out a muted sigh.

Molly’s hands, held behind her back, tighten then release. On tip toes, she extends herself toward him, their bodies touching from hip to sternum. Brushing his nose over her cheekbone, he turns his head and kisses the other side of her mouth.

Beneath him, her lips part almost imperceptibly. Reflexively, his respond in kind.

With a gloved hand, he brushes the strand of hair that has fallen loose from her messy ponytail away from her face, and without conscious volition cups her head, turning it so that the full breadth of their lips are resting together. In her hair, his fingers stroke in circles that make her eyes fall shut.

Sherlock too closes his eyes. She is a warm and solid weight against him. The heat of her flushed skin penetrates the layers of clothing between them causing his heart to race and breathing to stutter.

He begins to realise that he wants her to open her mouth and kiss him.

In his mind, he sees himself smear his thumb over her bottom lip, Molly’s tongue caressing it, her breathing coming short and heavy. Through the thin cotton of his shirt he would feel her body against his, and as he traced the line of her jaw, he would feel her pulse beating strongly in her throat. A split second illusion stretches out like warm toffee, her breath mingling in the cold air with his, beckoning him to taste, to explore.

It wouldn’t take very much: she’s small, and he towers over her. If he wanted, he could have her. He could guide her back against the doorway, take her wrists in one hand, her hair in the other. A pliant body, a willing mouth, he would kiss her, and kiss her, and kiss her…

When he realises that his defiant physiology is responding to the detailed visual he’s creating, he steps back and opens his eyes to find Molly peering at him, perplexed.

Sherlock lets go.

Stepping back and away from her he sees that he’s the only one affected by the moment. Molly is perfectly cool and calm. Whatever has happened – _almost happened_ – it hasn’t happened to her.

Unable to speak, even to say a simple goodbye, he retreats into the night.

 

~*~

 

“You’re staring, mate.”

“Hmm?” Is Sherlock’s noncommittal, distracted response to John, whom he’d managed to tune out long ago in favour of more interesting distractions.

“Bit rude that.”

Sherlock squares his shoulders and tears his eyes away from the tiny pathologist on the other side of the lab, giving his blogger a look that could cut a diamond in two.

“Not that I think it’s a bad idea, you and Molly Hooper.” John stirs his tea and fakes nonchalance, “In fact, I think it’s a very good idea. But staring at a girl for twenty minutes without blinking might make her think you’re weird. Well,” he weighs it up, “weirder than she already knows.”

“I wasn’t staring at Molly Hooper. Why would I be staring at Molly Hooper?”

John knows this tone, it’s even got a title: he thinks of it as _‘2 minute warning Sherlock.’_ It’s the one Sherlock uses when he’s hiding something. Like a gun.

Or a girlfriend.

“Dunno, no reason at all mate,” John’s tone is smug and knowing. “But I could have sworn you were.”

“I wasn’t staring.” Sherlock tells him calmly. (Sherlock’s second mistake with tone. John knows this one also, he calls it, _‘Oh Shit Sherlock, what have you done?’_ ).

“Course you weren’t. But,” John confides, inclining his head toward his little girl’s godmother, “you’d be a fucking moron not to.”

“Thank you, John, you know how much I value your input,” Sherlock sneers. “But as ever, your deductions are entirely incorrect.”

“You might be cleverer than me, Sherlock,” to which his friend gives him a half shrug and a smug smirk, “but I know what I know,” John ‘three continents’ Watson laughs, leaving his friend to make cow eyes without anyone to notice it.

 

~*~

 

He ignores his body and lies face down on his bed at night to stop his hands from straying. And though his will is strong his mind is stronger still, which is why when he sleeps his dreams are flooded with images of her soft lips.

In his nightly fantasies she kisses him. Sometimes gently, sometimes rough. On her bed, in his armchair. Clothed, unclothed. Every inch of her body is discovered with his mouth. In the way that dreams are, everything is hyper real, he feels her kiss spreading through every part of his body. Where their bodies join, wet heat pulses as he licks and sucks, biting livid marks into her delicate skin. Molly moans, pleads for _moremoremore_ , lust and desire compel him to obey.

One image dissolves into another, now it’s no longer her mouth that he’s exploring with his own. He’s on his back as she sits astride him, rocking against his flattened tongue lost in her own pleasure, Molly calling his name when she finds her completion.

Sherlock wakes daily to find that his sheets bear evidence of the power of his imagination.

Sweaty and sticky, he leans against the bathroom tiles as water sluices over his wiry muscles. The obsession with Molly, with kissing her, feels just like the old familiar craving for a hit.

 

~*~

 

“You’ve been avoiding me.”

Molly moves from where she’s been standing in the doorway watching him, supine, thinking, to sit on the coffee table in front of the sofa. Scarf unwound from her neck, she drops her bag on the floor and sheds her coat. From where he’s been lying for hours, fingers steepled under his chin, Sherlock pulls himself up to face her.

The scent of her makes his bare toes curl and scratch against the floorboards.

Since the night on her doorstep, he’s spent his time trying to figure out what this Molly specific hunger, _this_ _desire,_ to kiss her and be kissed by her is.

Before him, the space between her slightly splayed knees accommodates his, their thighs pressed together, and _oh_ , how perfectly their bodies fit. Her skirt has hitched up to mid-thigh in a very distracting manner, and her blouse, ill fitting, gapes open at her breast, showing the tiniest alluring glimpse of  a translucent black lace balconette bra. For all her décolletage’s attractions though, it’s the gentle sweep of her collarbones, the line of her neck, the delicate pink rosebud of her lips that demand his attention, and all at once he’s overwhelmed by the need to lick-bite-kiss her skin until it bruises. Try as hard as he may to compose himself, his mind takes a detour via the gutter, and he can almost taste her sweet core in his mouth.

So yes, he’s avoided her. There’s no point denying it. Molly would see through it in a second anyway.

“Not you, per se,” he lies, a barb of arousal spiking in his belly despite his attempts to tamp it down. “Rather an idée fixe that manifests in your presence.”

Her perfect lips part, and he swallows around the craving to insinuate himself into the space they leave. Tension, like the strings of his bow, is drawn tightly between them, urging him to take. Mark. Claim. Sherlock feels heat creep up the back of his neck.

“Oh,” she says, her voice lowered. “You still want to kiss me, then?”

Sherlock shifts to the edge of the sofa, responding unintentionally to the way her eyes have grown impossibly darker, and the dappling of her pale skin with a soft cherry blush hue that creeps beneath the vee of her white blouse to places he can’t see but has imagined all the same. Try as hard as he might, he just can’t seem to shake the energy between them. “You knew?”

“I knew before you did.” Her eyes linger on his mouth, and he sees the barest hint of gooseflesh rise on her chest. Either side of her thighs, her knuckles turn white gripping the table. “It’s the way you look at me.” She swallows hard. “With hunger.”

Now it’s his turn to say _Oh_ , because as she speaks Molly sways toward him, just enough that if he extended his neck they would be nose to nose.

Like a moth to her flame, he does just that. Because whether it’s deliberate on her part or not, Molly Hooper seems to be seducing him (admittedly, he’s not exactly, _not entirely_ , unwilling) in a very effective manner. The glint in her oh so innocent eyes seems to imply that it’s not entirely accidental.

Sherlock Holmes, scientist, bachelor, realises he may just be ruined.

With heat rising from her skin, she asks, “Why didn’t you?”

“Because,” he feels a flush of crimson begin at the tip of his ears, “I’ve never wanted to kiss anyone before.”

At this Molly inhales a tremulous breath.

“And consequentially,” he says with a vibrato breath of his own, “I have no idea whether the longing I feel is a pathology of the intellect or a symptom of attraction.”

Molly’s hands release their vice like grip of the table to smooth over his knees then under his thighs. He mirrors her actions and skims both hands up her legs, his fingertips grazing the skin just beneath the hem of her skirt.

“It’s usually both,” Molly struggles to stay still. There’s a ripple of muscle under his palms when he lets his hand move fractionally higher. The sensation causes him to suck in a breath, biting his lip. “The things you feel,” she says sotto voce, her voice seductive and maybe just a little wistful, face turning this way and that to place feather light kisses on his cheeks, his eyebrows, “are inextricably linked.”

“Sentiment as a mental illness? OCD?” From where he sits, that sounds just about right, because as she kisses he feels driven mad by the thought of allowing himself to turn his head, just a fraction, and placing his lips in her path.

“Yes,” she whispers between fleeting touches of her damp lips to his heated skin.

It’s difficult to say, not least of all because his mind is racing faster than either of them can keep up with and he knows where this will go if he follows the path to its natural conclusion, but also because he hates to admit the frailty his weakness causes. “I’m frightened of that,” he says with shame. “Impulse control isn’t my area. And I have no desire to do you harm while I exorcise a demon.”

Molly presses her forehead to his, telling him with infinite care, “I would never want to hurt you either.”

The way she says it, so lovingly, with so much kindness, makes his chest ache with a dull pressure.

“I’d better go.” She’s shaking when she stands: her bare legs brushing against his pyjama covered ones, causing a frisson of electricity to shiver down his spine as she extricates herself from their pseudo-embrace.

Sherlock closes his eyes so that he doesn’t have to watch her leave.

 

~*~

 

It’s well after midnight, and though she’s already asleep when he sits on the edge of her bed it doesn’t even occur to her to tell him to piss off because she’s had a shit day at work, and her mother is visiting tomorrow.

In the darkness she sits up against the headboard and pats the empty side of the bed.

Sherlock toes off his shoes and kicks them away. His coat and jacket are already draped over her dressing gown on the back of the bedroom door. Beside her on the bed, he leans into the pillows, their bodies connected from hip to elbow.

Without meaning to, Molly rests her head on his shoulder. Before she has time to decide if it was a mistake, Sherlock rest his cheek against her crown. She is sleep warm, comforting, safe. Her bedroom always feels more like home than his own ever has.

When he sighs, she feels his whole body shudder. Against his chest, she hears his heart beat wildly. “I find this kind of thing- It’s complicated, for me.”

“I know,” she says quietly.

“It’s only difficult because I care for you very much.”

“I know that too,” her hold tightens.

They fall asleep that way, wrapped in each other’s arms.

 

~*~

 

When it finally happens, it’s not complicated at all.

It’s been weeks since the night they talked about it, and they’ve fallen back into their old familiar routine. He thinks about it, still. Kissing her. The need, if anything, has grown stronger: at night he lies awake thinking about how it would feel to have the one thing he wants. To have her. Sometimes, just sometimes, he allows his hands to play a part in these unfulfilled fantasies, and he gets off to a reel of images of Molly’s mouth on his. But he’s also thought about the other things he wants - hands, heat, wet, warm - and in his mind the picture evolves into something more.

All of that is for naught though, because as hard as he tries, he just can’t bring himself to initiate. A touch of hands is all it would take, their fingers brushing accidentally on purpose. Or a goodnight kiss on the cheek that lasts a little too long. Molly, knowing what he wanted, would give it to him without hesitation.

But for all his imagined contrivances, it’s the slip of a scalpel that ends the torment.

Quietly they work. Opposite each other at the table cum workstation in the middle of Sherlock’s kitchen, he’s dissecting the heart she’s brought ‘round as she reads through his notes for a case that’s about to be heard in the courts.

_“Shit!”_ he hisses, jumping up from the table.

“What it is?” Molly rushes to his side, alarmed.

“Nothing.” He grumbles, angry at his own carelessness. But Molly takes his hand anyway to look at the small nick in the heel of his thumb under his Nitrile glove.

“Was it clean?” Rummaging under the sink, she finds the first aid kit and pushes him down to perch on the edge of the table, making them just about the same height.

“The scalpel? Yes.”

Between his spread legs, Molly pulls the glove off to examine the shallow cut. Her professional assessment of the puncture wound being: “You’ll live. Just give me a second to clean you up and stick a plaster on it.”

Sherlock fakes exasperation, eliciting a wry grin from his doctor.

The routine is an old one: they’ve practiced it many times. He’ll be obstinate insisting that he’s fine, all the while pouting as though waiting for Mummy to kiss it better, meanwhile she’ll pretend not to notice that he’s being a baby, patch him up and send him on his way with a medicinal peck to the site of his injury.

In the space between his strong thighs, Molly’s hips press against him. Gently, she takes his hand, cleaning the cut with a sterile wipe. An odd sensation prickles along Sherlock’s neck, as though a current is passing through her body to his. That odd tension he feels only around her fizzes and sparks to life. He tries to swallow it down, will it away, but finds that it’s no use.

It gives him satisfaction, somewhat, to see she’s not entirely immune to it either: softly, she closes her eyes, puffing out a tight breath.

Between his legs she moves, and his thighs involuntarily clench around her. Molly licks her lips in the most distracting way imaginable.

In the air around them something has shifted. It’s becoming thick. Heavy. Laden with the suggestion of intimacy.

For a silent eternity they look deeply into each other’s eyes, searching, questioning. 

In his chest, hummingbirds’ wings beat strongly. The entire flock swooping, plummeting to the bottom of his toes and soaring upward again, taking the air in his lungs with them on their journey.

As she leans over his shoulder to reach for the Band Aids behind them on the table, her body makes contact with his. Turning his face toward hers, he smells her lavender hair and something earthy beneath it that radiates from the pulse in her neck with the heat of her own blood.

The hand she’s not holding slides slowly up her neck and into her hair. He inhales again, this time arousal tickles his spine. Low, with intent, he says her name, _“Molly.”_

She stills, and he hears the breath that passes through her parted lips roughen. “Yes?” Slowly she angles her head, turning to him.

“May I have a kiss?” His voice is dark and steady, giving no hint of the thunderous beating inside his rib cage.

The fingers in her hair tug slightly, bringing them face to face.

Molly raises the heel of his hand and pulls back just enough to kiss it. Her eyes a question, a challenge. It’s pure provocation. _This?_   they ask.

A pink triangle darts out to wet his bottom lip. Sherlock shakes his head, grabbable curls tumbling over his forehead.  _No._

Over the sensitive skin of his wrist her mouth hovers, waits.  _Or this?_

The flash of her glittering eyes meets his. Locked in her heated gaze, he bites at the scar on the corner of his mouth.  _Um, no._

Slowly, softly, his fingertips rake through her hair, pulling it loose from the band that holds it. Following the line of her vertebrae – cervical, thoracic, lumbar – one by one until his hand reaches the small of her back, resting on the waistband of her yellow skirt, his thumb smoothing over bare skin where her blouse has ridden up. With the barest of force, he presses their bodies together.

Molly’s eyes fall shut, and she hums a contented little noise that shoots straight to Sherlock’s groin. When she releases his injured hand, he allows himself to savour the anticipation for just a little bit longer.

Sherlock sweeps strands of her hair away from the delicate structure of her face. As he smooths it down, he lightly traces the shell of her ear, brushing his string calloused tips over her cheekbones and brows, stroking her flushing cheeks with the back of one finger allowing it to trail a path that follows her mandible from one side to the other only to begin the journey again in reverse.

His fingertips idle over a delectable little spot below her jaw. Feather light, like a brush of wings, his lips sweep against it.

Somewhere along the way, her hands have come to rest flat on his chest. She sways gently, almost indiscernibly, her face leaning into his touch. Sherlock narrows the distance between them and together they breathe hotly over one another’s mouths. They draw close only to part, all the better to tease and incite each other.

Molly’s pupils have dilated, and there’s a ravenous gleam in her eyes. Simultaneously she exudes power and submission. _How well it suits her_ , he thinks.

Time slows. Every sense is heightened by the illusion of the moment stretching out. In the seconds before they finally kiss, he smells/sees/tastes/hears/feels every part of her.

Noses brushing together, Sherlock holds the back of her neck, his thumb under her jaw tilting it up. Ghosting over her lips, he noses her cheekbone, kissing the sensitive spot below her ear. First the left, then right, his soft lips meet her downy skin with no pressure at all.

Molly moans, _“Sherlock”_ , her fingernails scratching against the fabric of his dark blue shirt, her hands glide over the hard plains of his pectoral muscles, gripping his shoulders.

Both her temples are kissed, then her eyelids and nose.

Trapped between them is a ridge of flesh that throbs in time with his heart. Molly presses her hip against it, and the hand resting at the small of her back dips beneath the band fondling the lace trim of her knickers where it meets her skin.

Her hands glide down along his biceps then up again, over his trapezius muscles and under the collar of his shirt to press her palms along the ivory column of his neck. The heat he feels in his gut has made its way to the surface of his skin and her hands feel cool and pleasing.

Against her top lip, she feels a chaste kiss. The merest brush of his achingly gentle lips. In response she kisses his plush mouth and there’s a shocked intake of breath followed by a lurid moan that she feels vibrating through his chest.

Open mouthed, he covers her lips with his own.

At first it’s languid. Gentle. Sherlock sucks her bottom lip into his mouth, releasing it with a scrape of his teeth and quickly repeating the action this time licking with just the tip of his tongue. Tilting his head, the angle changes and he drags his velvet hot mouth over her philtrum, sucking on the salty dew that has begun to gather in that small notch beneath her pixie-like nose. Each ridge is tasted in turn, then softly kissed.

A tentative tongue meets his, Molly delicately entering through the extravagant Cupid’s bow that’s slanted against hers. The hands on his neck tangle in his hair, and his hand skims down her side to the bell of her hips. Both his large hands cup her backside, and then his mouth isn’t on hers anymore.

“Can I feel your skin?” Breathless, his pale eyes are no longer the colour of moonlight but that of a black velvet night. “If I promise that I won’t take this too far, can I feel you against me as we kiss?”

Molly watches the words form on his kiss swollen lips, her breasts heaving, she is dizzy with want. She nods and says, “In the bedroom. It’ll be easier there.”

“Right,” his voice broken, “yes, if you think so.”

It takes a moment to calm themselves enough to stumble the twenty or so steps to his bedroom. When they get there, he shuts the door, pressing her against it.

Molly is good with her hands, it takes her no time at all to slip each of the seven buttons on his shirt loose and free the ends from his trousers, all the while their eyes never leaving each other. He smiles adoringly, crinkling his eyes, and she can’t help but return it in kind. Beneath his shirt, she slides her hands over his lightly muscled frame, slipping the shirt from his shoulders. Sherlock shrugs it to the floor, and slips his hand beneath her blouse, cupping her breast. Under his palm he feels her nipple pucker, and he simply can’t wait any longer to feel her so he begins to pluck at Molly’s buttons.

It’s not something he’s done before, so he’s less adept than he would like to be. With each button that’s opened his fingertips brush the English rose skin they’d served to hide. The object of his desire closes her eyes and lets him slowly reveal her body.

The afternoon breeze that floats through the open window seeps over her. Her skin turning to gooseflesh, perhaps from the draft, more likely from his careful touch. She shivers and he huffs a self-satisfied breath.

Sherlock’s hand on her exposed sternum drags lower parting her breasts: his eyes linger there.

“Can this come off too?” He rubs the selvedge trim of her cotton bra between his fingers. Practical and plain, it reminds him of every teenage fantasy he’d had about corrupting a good Catholic girl. It’s perfect.

With no hesitation, her answer is: “Yes.”

Sherlock catches her lip on his, kisses the fawn coloured freckle at the corner of her mouth that can only be seen when she’s not wearing lipstick. His index fingers skim along the edge of her lingerie, hooking under the straps and easing them from her shoulders. Where they’ve been has left small marks: Sherlock sucks the indented skin and laves it with this tongue.

The weight of her small breasts is taken in his hand, one at a time. As he holds them in his palm, he swipes his thumb over a taut pink nipple and pulls the soft fabric of the cup down. His eyes rake over her breasts and he takes her mouth with ferocity and heat.

Behind her back, Molly undoes the eyelets, pulling the scrap of fabric free from between their bodies and discarding it. She’s only vaguely aware that Sherlock has pulled the hem of her short skirt up to her waist.

His hands begin to move. They’re on her hips, then kneading her backside again, slipping around her back, under her thighs, lifting her, carrying her to the bed.

The weight of his body pins her to the mattress, he arranges her beneath him so that her arms are draped loosely over her head: her legs open so that he can lie between them. Molly’s knickers are soaking wet, and there’s a damp patch on the front of his trousers where he’s begun to leak.

All he wants to do is touch her with his lips. Bare skin on bare skin, Sherlock supports himself on one arm so that he can map the path his kisses will follow with his fingertips - the ones that are shot through with sparks of kinetic energy. Over her mouth and along her jaw, down her throat, sweeping her collarbones, lightly he kisses. Sherlock’s palm skims her ribs, her nipple, while he licks and sucks the oh so soft flesh on the underside of her arms. Taking it into his mouth he bites down playfully on her earlobe, his breath ticklish in her hair.

“Sherlock.” Molly moans and squirms underneath him in a gratifying way.

“Shushhh.” He murmurs, scraping his teeth over her neck, a quiver of lust tingling from the curl at the nape of his neck all the way down to his tailbone. In one large hand, he holds both her wrists together, still above her head. Molly’s body arches and their nipples catch on each other’s. Tenderly he tells her, his lips on the freckle under her jaw, “I want this to last a little longer.”

Between her legs the pulsing increases with the sound of his voice. He looks debauched and feral, and Molly clenches her legs around his waist.

At the hollow of her throat he nips her dewy skin then sucks hard enough to bruise. She’s panting desperately now as he kisses his way over her sternum and between her breasts, tonguing the marks left there by the wire that supported them. He tracks the depression with infinitely small kisses, hundreds, one after the other, along the feminine curve that he licks all the way to its pebbled tip. Over the taut point he breathes hotly, and Molly’s skin turns to gooseflesh. After a beat, then two, he latches on to it ever so softly and draws it into his mouth. It tightens in his wet heat, and Molly pleads breathlessly, “Suck.”

Molly – _Jesus_ – Molly, the sounds she’s making stir something animalistic inside him. A rush of warmth spreads below his waist to concentrate in the ridge of flesh that’s beginning to urgently demand his attention – matters not exactly helped by Molly squeezing her thighs around him once more. In the pit of his stomach a fire is burning, one that’s heating the lava that flows through his bones.

It’s all he can do to keep the pace of the exploration he’s conduction slow and steady, because every cell in his body is alight with the craving to consume her.

He worships her breasts: his tongue darting out, flicking the nipple, pressing it to his teeth, then suckling at the sweet flesh. Where he holds her wrists, Molly struggles a little, just enough to make him bite down playfully in retaliation. The wanton gasp she emits - followed by an oozing sigh - is all he needs to tell him he’s got her tendencies just right. He looks up at her through thick ebony lashes: her throat is a long tense line where her head has pushed back into the mattress, her mouth slack, and everywhere he’s kissed has turned crimson – creating a map on her skin of the places this sensual journey has taken him.

Sherlock releases her hands to skim his blunt fingernails down her arm, and in doing so gives tacit permission for Molly to take his head between both her hands and kiss him fully on the mouth again.

As she does, he lets his hand wander down her body, over her hip, caressing the leg that has wrapped itself around him. When he slips his fingers into the crook of her knee Molly bucks her pelvis into his.

“Fuck,” she groans into his mouth, “do that again.”

His brilliant fingers linger there, stroking the sensitive flesh, while his tongue mimics the motion, caressing, tangling with hers. Warm and erotic, each press of lips to lips makes them both lightheaded, deprived of oxygen.

Along his back, Molly marks his pale skin with her nails. In his hair, her fingers pull to guide his mouth to deepen the kiss. Their bodies, flush against each other, are glistening with sticky perspiration. Rough and filthy, the kisses are taking on an edge of desperation, and he realises he’s underestimated the sheer intensity of it. Of them. Of the feeling that mingles with the lust and cravings, the one that could be happiness.

Minutes, hours, days, may have passed that way when he asks, “This isn’t just kissing anymore, is it?”

“No,” she agrees huskily, “it’s not.”

Sherlock’s voices shakes, his eyes close tightly. In between deep breaths he manages to say, “We- We should stop then.”

Reluctantly, Molly nods her agreement. It’s not disappointment he sees when he opens his eyes, but wholehearted acceptance of his limitations. He wants everything – and so does she – but even more, he wants to do this right. Which, he grudgingly admits to himself, means taking things slow, because this is all new to him, and the last thing he wants to do is fuck it up.

He tenderly kisses her again. Still lying in each other’s arms they slowly come down from the high: the switches flicked back to off one by one. Stroking, softly kissing, they share smiles and reassuring looks that say there’s time for everything else to come when it’s right.

“Is it always like that? Kissing?” Finally calm again, Sherlock tries to process what’s just happened. Already stored in the ‘wank material’ section of his mind palace (subcategory, Hooper, Molly A., Lips/Mouth [October – November 2017]), he knows that the minute she leaves he’ll be in the shower reliving every second of the last half hour in glorious technicolour, anatomically correct, detail.

“If it is,” Molly shakes her head, wide eyed and a bit dazed, “then I’ve been doing it wrong for the last twenty five years. Like, _really_ wrong.”

Sherlock laughs, full throated from the bottom of his diaphragm, his shoulders heaving with the force of it, his face buried in the crook of Molly’s neck. He can’t resist: he kisses her once more.

For the longest time they just lay there, Sherlock’s head on her shoulder, Molly’s arms wrapped around him.

“I should go,” at last she says, “it’s getting late and I don’t fancy taking the night bus.”

“You could stay a while longer,” he suggests, chin propped on her still bare shoulder, his eyes questioning, “have dinner with me and I’ll take you home after?”

“Metaphorical dinner?” she teases, “Or…?”

“ _Dinner_ dinner.” Ridiculous man that he is, he blushes, knots forming in his stomach, suddenly shy despite the fact that they’re lying on his bed half naked after a necking session worthy of horny teenagers on Viagra. “That is to say, if you wanted to continue this at some point in the future-”

“I want.” Molly beams. She exhales a huffed breath as though she’s been waiting to say those words for years.

_Maybe_ , Sherlock realises, _she has._

_Maybe they both have._

_‘Oh’_ he mouths, “Good.”

“Though if you’re planning to kiss me goodnight on my doorstep, you should know that doing this,” she waves a hand vaguely between them, “would constitute public indecency and there are laws against that.”

He laughs, lovingly stroking her face, “I wasn’t planning on getting arrested, no. But you should know I do have other plans for you and I. Lots and lots them.”

“Hmm,” she hums, smiling.

“So you’ll stay?” Suddenly it doesn’t feel like they’re talking about just tonight anymore.

Molly tips her head back to look him squarely in the eye, and he knows when she tells him, “Yes, I will,” that he’s right. That she doesn’t just mean tonight. What she’s giving him is a forever answer.

The waiting, for both of them it seems, is over.


End file.
